James Hibberd has the scoop that the premiere episode of season 3 of Game of Thrones, “Valar Dohaeris”, is the most watched episode ever of the series. The initial 9PM showing pulled 4.4 million viewers, while with repeats the show reached 6.7 million viewers. That’s an increase of 13 percent over last year’s premiere. And that’s with the Easter holiday and the finale of AMC’s smash hit The Walking Dead scheduled at the same time. Hibberd notes that the 10PM reairing in particular had strong numbers for a repeat, and he suggests that’s because some viewers switched to the show after Dead was done.

By way of comparison, last year fellow HBO show True Blood scored 5.2 million viewers on the initial airing of their premiere… but just 6.3 million with repeats.